


my bones have found a place to lie down and sleep

by Ellis



Category: Being Human, Being Human (UK)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-09
Updated: 2013-03-09
Packaged: 2017-12-04 19:38:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/714333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellis/pseuds/Ellis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here are your hands, ripe for touching, for feeling. Here is your heart, beating slower than it ever has before. Here are the teeth marks in your neck, punctures, a kiss gone wrong, bruising around the edges, hollow in the middle like the centre of your chest. Here is the lurch in your stomach that feels more like a knife in the ribs. Here are your clothes: a reminder of your baptism in blood. Here is your chest, devoid of heart, devoid of soul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my bones have found a place to lie down and sleep

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Being Human. The excerpt at the beginning of this piece is from "Snow and Dirty Rain" from Richard Siken; the title is from "Smother" by Daughter.
> 
> I'm not terribly content with how this turned out, but it'll do (for now).

_I wanted to hurt you_

_but the victory is that I could not stomach it._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You have three new voicemails. _Beep_.

 

“It’s me—um—it’s Tasha—” Muffled noises in the background. A male voice; low, distinctive. _What are you doing?_ “I… I—hold on—” Distant noises. Her: talking softly, hands over her phone to stop her voice travelling. The male: voice rising, outrage, concern. _Why?_ “Look—I… you’re angry at me, aren’t you? That’s why you’re not picking up. Um. I don’t know—I… I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m calling. Please call me back. Please.”

 

End of message: replay or continue to next message?

 

“It’s me again. I asked you to call me back and you didn’t. Haven’t. Where are you? I’m… I don’t want you to be angry with me. I did what I thought was right—I need your help. Please call me back. Please, Dominic.” A noise like her breath is catching in her throat; a shaky exhalation later, “Please.” Tearful. “ _Please_.” Whispered.

 

End of message: replay or continue to next message?

 

“I—I—I’m – _fuck_ – I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I need your help, but I can’t—where _are_ you? Don’t worry about calling me back, I—I’ll take care of it. I’m sorry. About all the voicemails.” A heavy pause. “About everything. I’m sorry.”

 

End of message: replay?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She wakes up. She cries. She wraps her arms around herself and rocks herself on the floor, knees tucked under her chin, every bit the child she no longer is.

 

“I’m sorry,” he’s saying, over and over, a broken record on repeat. He’s staring at her face, at her neck, at her hands, her hair. “I’m so sorry.”

 

Her face is taut and hollow and her throat tightens like she’s on the edge of screaming. She cries openly, tears making tracks over the blood, dripping from her chin onto her hands. “For what?” but the question has no bite; it’s as haunted as she is.

 

He doesn’t ask what she’s seen. Says nothing for a moment, face wracked with guilt. He thinks he might scream if she doesn’t. That they can scream together because this was never meant to happen. “I tried to save you.”

 

Her face closes up. “Oh.” She smiles but it’s not real. The corners of her mouth twist, and then she’s crying again, face turned away from him, hair hanging limp as she whimpers and tries to stifle the noise.

 

He knows he should move. Should offer comfort. Should… but he remains immobile, hanging back, hands clenching and unclenching. Whispers: “Are you hungry?”

 

“No.” She sniffs, wipes her nose with the cuff of her jacket. “I… yes. No. No.”

 

There it is: the fighting spirit, the spark. “You are,” he says gently, eyes hooded with shame. “It’s alright.” It’s not, but in the brutality of first waking, who is he to remind her of that?

 

“I’m not,” she says. She looks at him: her eyes are vacant. She’s here physically and yet she’s somewhere else.

 

“Here,” he soothes. He offers her his wrist, approaching her slowly. “It will help.”

 

“No,” she whispers, but she takes it anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are your hands, ripe for touching, for feeling. Here is your heart, beating slower than it ever has before. Here are the teeth marks in your neck, punctures, a kiss gone wrong, bruising around the edges, hollow in the middle like the centre of your chest. Here is the lurch in your stomach that feels more like a knife in the ribs. Here are your clothes: a reminder of your baptism in blood. Here is your chest, devoid of heart, devoid of soul.

 

The room is dark. There are no mirrors here. You won’t see yourself in one anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I want to go home,” she says. Her knees are pressed together; she’s sitting on the settee, shoulders tight, back stiff. “Thanks for everything, but—”

 

“I can’t let you do that,” he says. His voice is soft, almost beguiling. He sits beside her, hands in his lap, staring into space. “You’re too much of a danger.”

 

She takes a breath. Holds it until her chest feels like it will burst. Breathes out. “I want to go home.”

 

“You can’t,” he repeats. They will go around in circles until their feet bleed as much as they both have. He peers at her out of the corner of his eye. “Where _is_ your home?”

 

“Why?” Her fingers tighten around the mobile in her hands, digging in until her knuckles turn white.

 

“Do you live alone?”

 

There’s a beat.

 

“Yes.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You have no new messages.

 

This does not stop her from checking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Tom’s going to kill you, you know.” She says it into the silence without much feeling but he seems to find it funny, fixes her with a sad half-smile and eyes rife with pain.

 

“I know.”

 

She wonders if he truly knows, if he _really_ understands Tom’s rage, how eagerly he grabbed his stakes and fled with nothing but vengeance on his lips.

 

“I’m sorry.” Her smile is a mirror of his half-smile. They sit like that for a while, side by side, looking at each other but saying nothing.

 

“I know.” He shifts where he sits. “I can’t let you leave. You understand that, don’t you?”

 

Saying nothing for a moment, she considers it. Trapped here in this house that isn’t hers, in a place as unfamiliar to her as anything could be. She makes a noise in the back of her throat, skims her fingers over the keyboard of her mobile. “I suppose.”

 

“Good. I’ll… teach you.”

 

“To be like you? Oh, thanks.” She smiles again, shakes her head. “Look, I…”

 

She decides not to finish her sentence.

 

Instead:

 

“You’re an Old One, aren’t you?”

 

He winces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You have no new voicemails.

 

She checks again. Tells herself _just in case_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s when he and the ghost are arguing that she runs. She waits until they’re really into it; the girl is screaming about how she doesn’t know him, not really, not at all, and he’s rebuking all her claims with an impassioned fervour that cannot begin to match the rage and betrayal in the ghost’s voice—and then she’s running for the door, slamming it behind her, down the path, onto the pavement, running like her life depends on it.

 

And she thinks: maybe it does. Maybe if she doesn’t get away, _that_ will be her life. Arguing with a ghost about who’s more of a monster.

 

“ _Natasha_!” someone shouts, and she thinks it might be _Him_ , but no, it’s the vampire. It’s Hal, running after her, so she runs faster, trying to ignore the stinging in her throat and the ache in her gums. “Wait— _wait_!” but she doesn’t want to wait around, she wants to be rid of him, rid of _this_.

 

She keeps running. She’s never been one for running, except now she wishes she were better at it. She reaches the end of the road, almost skids as she swings left and continues down another road, a scream of hysteria bubbling at the pit of her stomach. She can’t scream. She won’t scream—she had her chance and she passed it up, and as the wind and the sheer force of her movements whip her hair up into a frenzy around her face, she forces herself to swallow every single frightened thought and keep running.

 

He’s still behind her. No longer shouting—that would draw attention, how thoughtful of him to realise this—but still running. She can hear his footfalls and the heaviness of his breath. She wonders why he still bothers to breathe, then draws her own breath and thinks oh, that’s why.

 

It makes her chest ache.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She has a sixty second head start but she can’t shake him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Instead she slips into the block of flats while he’s still coming up the road, tapping in the key code with shaking fingers, and then gets the satisfaction of slamming the door in his face. In retaliation, he slams his fists against the wood, cursing—then pleading: “Natasha, don’t—come back to the house—you’re a danger to yourself—Natasha, don’t _do_ this, _Natasha_ —”

 

She turns away.

 

Ascends the first flight of stairs, the second, the third. Somewhere in between the first and second, she pulls her phone out of her pocket.

 

No new messages. No new voicemails.

 

A part of her is intrinsically aware that she’s still covered in blood. She’s washed her face and her hands but it’s still in her hair and on her clothes. She thinks: it won’t matter. Once I—

 

Are you going to tell him?

 

Once I—

 

She can’t process the thought. Can’t even finish it.

 

Here is the door: she bites her lip. She twists her hands around and around, closes her eyes, opens her eyes—the door is still in front of her. Still closed.

 

He’s probably not in there.

 

She knocks. Once, twice, thrice, until it becomes less about knocking and more about hammering on the wood until she thinks her fists might blister and bleed.

 

The door opens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Ah,” he says. Like he’s not surprised to see her, like he—“Tasha.”

 

He’s still in his work clothes if you count a crisp shirt and grey trousers as his work clothes, which he doesn’t—not without his waistcoat and suit jacket—but she does. She almost drops her phone at the sight of him, clumsily shoves it back into the pocket of her jeans and swallows down everything silly she wants to say—why didn’t you answer my calls, why didn’t you phone me back, I need your help—and stands in silence, trying to catch her breath. Then:

 

“I’m sorry,” she says. His eyes are combing over her appearance, narrowing by the second. She can’t breathe. Her gums ache. “I’m sorry, I—I didn’t mean to leave three voicemails, but I was desperate. I didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Dominic, I’m—”

 

He lifts his chin, eyes sweeping over her face, her hair. “What happened to you?”

 

“I…”

 

And here the words die in her throat: here she cannot say what she wants to say. Her mouth twists downwards, her eyes become guarded. She takes a step back from the clinical glow of his flat where he stands framed in the doorway like some sort of deity. The light is making his face softer and his eyes bluer. Her gaze flickers to his throat. She makes herself look at him, look at his eyes, the tired lines beneath them, the frown on his forehead.

 

She can hear the steady beating of his heart.

 

“I…”

 

It’s an eerily calm pounding. Dum. Dum. Dum. Steady. Reliable. She tries again:

 

“Dominic, I—” Makes a choking noise instead, wraps her hands around her throat and starts to throttle herself.

 

His heart speeds up. Or maybe she’s just hearing things. If her eyes are blurred with tears, that means they can’t be trusted: does the same stand for her hearing when she’s no longer certain of herself?

 

“Come inside, Natasha,” he says. He exhales and it almost sounds like a sigh. He steps back, steps into the light, and for a moment he becomes one with it as she hesitates, her hands falling from her neck.

 

“Okay,” she says. “Okay.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He makes tea. This is a first.

 

He sits her down in the living room, which is just as stark and void of life as she remembers it, and places the mug on the coffee table in front of her, on top of a coaster. Then he sits in the armchair, his own mug of tea in his hands, staring at her without saying a word.

 

The distance between them feels like a thousand miles.

 

“What did Hal do, Tasha?” he asks.

 

She presses her lips into a thin line and keeps her eyes on her tea. Her stomach feels queasy and her throat is terribly dry; she thinks of Hal offering his wrist to her, she thinks of herself feeding from him. She wonders what she’s doing here now that she has become everything she’s meant to hate.

 

“He—um…” Clearing her throat, she focuses on the coffee table. It’s immaculate; he must not have many guests. No, he _doesn’t_ have any guests. She must be his first in a long, long time. “He…”

 

She can feel his eyes on her. His presence in the room is both uncomfortable and comforting: her stomach twists. She regrets coming here.

 

“Saved me,” she says. Her fingers are pressing into the mug until the tips are turning white. “He saved me.”

 

“I see.” There is a pause, a moment where she senses he wants to speak but doesn’t. “Would you care to explain the meaning of your voicemails?”

 

“How about _you_ explain why you didn’t fucking call me back?” Her head snaps up, face indignant. She’s baring her teeth before she realises what she’s doing. “I left _three_ voicemails, Dominic! _Three_! _I needed your help_!”

 

A beat in which their eyes meet. His heartbeat is slow, steady, unfazed by her outburst.

 

“Do you still need my help?” He raises his tea to his lips, takes a sip. She hasn’t touched hers, but mirrors him anyway and swallows a mouthful of the warm brew. “Natasha…”

 

She can’t breathe. Forces herself to, lowers the mug and puts it back on the table, twists her hands in her lap. “Yes. Um. Yes. I do.”

 

He tilts his head. Stares at her for what must be a million years but in reality is no more than a few seconds.

 

“You should have covered your neck before you knocked on my door,” he says.

 

Her hand flies to the bite marks there. She physically recoils, mouth turning down, dropping her gaze and sliding further up the settee to get as far away from him as she can, aware that he is still watching her and all she can feel is the simmering, burning ache of shame flooding through her veins.

 

“ _Fuck_.” She’s close to getting to her feet but he still hasn’t moved; he’s gauging her for a reaction, she realises. Pressing her hand over the marks, she twists away from him, swallowing thickly, bringing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her free arm around her legs. “I— _Dominic_ —when did you know?”

 

“As soon as I laid eyes on you,” he answers. His voice is careful, delicate. He hasn’t got any weapons, she thinks. Not _here_. At the department, yes, maybe, but here… “Would you like to explain what happened?”

 

She thinks: I don’t know. All she remembers is—“I… After you left, that old man spoke to me.” Her voice is hollow and she doesn’t look at him. The ache in her gums is intensifying. “And the next thing I know… I’m going down to the kitchen and getting a knife. Um—and then I walked to Tom’s house—Hal’s house—whoever’s house it is… and then—he was tied up. I—I don’t know why I freed him.”

 

“You _freed_ him?” Disdain, disgust, shock. “Tasha, _why_?”

 

 _Tasha_. Why? She shakes her head, childlike, feeling seven years old again. “I don’t know,” she whispers, trembling. “I cut my throat once he was free.”

 

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him lean forward in his chair. There’s an expression on his face that she’s never seen before; out of curiosity, out of some emotion she can’t place, she looks at him to try and read it. They stare at each other, eyes meeting, something unsaid passing between them. She half expects him to pull out a stake, but neither of them moves.

 

“A sacrifice,” he says to himself, dropping his gaze, but she hears anyway and it makes her chest ache. There’s something in his voice that hurts. “Perhaps. Or perhaps—”

 

“I’m _not_ suicidal,” she says. “Wasn’t,” she amends, voice softer. “I wasn’t suicidal.”

 

He looks at her again, tilting his head. Nods once. “I know.” The emotion is still there, just beneath the surface. But then: “And I assume he turned you in order to, ah, ‘save’ you?” it’s gone.

 

She looks down at the floor. “Yes.” Her voice is barely a whisper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is what he knows: they have run out of blood. He cannot manage her condition and sincerely doubts if _she_ can manage her condition. He does not trust the vampire or the werewolf. He is the last link in the chain protecting humanity against the flood and his freelance agent has been turned into one of the monsters. Protocol would dictate that he kills her. And yet… he did not kill Alan. He did not have the resources to find and kill Alan, but that is not the point. He has a stake in his bedroom that he could use. This does not require resources: this requires the age-old No Care mantra that he still clings to despite everything. She has not yet tried to attack him or feed from him but this will not last forever. At any moment, she could strike. He can defend himself easily enough, but he is emotionally compromised. She is Natasha. She has placed enough distance between them now that this might indicate she has no desire to hurt him. She is a vampire: all she knows is bloodlust. And yet he placed the tea in front of her and she did not attack him—perhaps she is biding her time—she is a monster—she cannot be trusted— _above all else, she is Tasha_.

 

She stares at him warily from across the room, trying to work out what he’s going to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Are you going to kill me?” she asks in a small voice.

 

“I don’t know,” he says as he unbuttons his shirt cuffs and rolls up his sleeves.

 

“Please don’t,” she whispers. “I don’t want to die. I’m sorry.”

 

He looks at her then, something written so clearly across his face that she can almost read it—but her eyes are blurring and she’s crying again. He says, with a degree of gentleness, “I’m afraid I don’t have the resources to do that.”

 

She half sobs, half laughs. Wipes furiously at her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I wanted to die, but Hal—he wouldn’t let me. He kept saying he could save me. I’m sorry.”

 

“I don’t have any blood to give you either,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

 

She smiles ruefully. “I wouldn’t expect you to—”

 

“Of course not.” He sits up straighter, suddenly all business. “I may be able to procure a steady supply from the Red Cross, but it would require a compromise on your part.”

 

Oh. She hesitates, thinking of Tom. “I…”

 

“It would be prudent for you to learn to control your urges, would it not?” He’s picked up his tea again. “Hal would be useful. In exchange for his mentoring services, you could keep an eye on him. The fact he’s feeding again makes him dangerous—”

 

“What about me? Am _I_ dangerous?” Her voice is sharper than intended.

 

He pauses. “Particularly dangerous. Which is why I will make new living arrangements for you, and—” He peers at her for a moment, frowning. “You’re hungry.” His voice is flat. His sleeves are still rolled up.

 

She can hear his heartbeat and the beat of his pulse. Shakes her head despite the fact she wants to lick her lips. “Hal, um—fed me—”

 

“From?” He shakes his head. Purses his lips, sighs, rises and leaves the room. Seconds later he’s back with a stake and she’s flinching and rising to her feet, putting as much distance between them as possible.

 

“Himself!” she retorts, eyes wide. “Please don’t—don’t kill me, Dominic, _please_ —I know I’m one of them now, I know I’m a monster, but… I don’t—I don’t want to die—”

 

Lowering the stake slowly, he places it on the coffee table and sits back down in the armchair.

 

“I’m at risk if you’re hungry,” he says matter-of-factly. And then he rises and leaves the room again. This time he’s gone for a long time—so long, in fact, that she fancies he might have left the flat altogether.

 

“Dominic?” she calls out, panic in her voice. Silence. Then: the faint thud of his heartbeat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The mug is steaming hot when he enters the room and places it on the coffee table, pushing it towards her. His arm is bandaged.

 

She stares at him. “I don’t—”

 

“The hungrier you are, the more at risk I am, Tasha. This will do until I can procure what you need from the Red Cross.”

 

Her lips thin; she cradles the mug between her hands and turns away from him. The hunger is clawing at her throat, rising, rising, rising. “I don’t want you to—”

 

Her eyes turn black.

 

He doesn’t flinch.


End file.
